Saturday, 28 November 2015

ISIS's plan, and the west's trap

The pattern of conflict since 2001 teaches a lesson that western states refuse to learn.

USAF F-15E fighters. Flickr/Stuart Rankin. Some rights reserved.Al-Qaida
evolved throughout the 1990s. By the end of the decade it had become a
small but potent transnational revolutionary movement rooted in a
perverse, unrepresentative version of one of the world’s main
monotheistic faiths – Islam, one of the three 'religions of the book'
alongside Judaism and Christianity.
Its ambitious aim
was to cause the overthrow of the 'near enemy' regimes in the Middle
East and southwest Asia, replacing them with 'proper' Islamist regimes;
to see Zionism destroyed; and to so damage the 'far enemy' of the United
States and its western partners that a new caliphate would grow
outwards from the centre of Islam.
At the heart of its doctrine was
an eschatological worldview whose timescales were potentially eternal.
Even so, one of its key early tactics was quite specific and immediate –
violent actions within the 'near' and 'far' enemies that would provoke
massive overreactions and then sow dissension and chaos. 9/11 was the
most substantial of these. The attack directly aimed at drawing the
United States into occupying Afghanistan; instead, the US response was
focused on using Northern Alliance paramilitaries as surrogate troops,
and it took several years before the Taliban could return in strength.
Many
of the violent assaults of the early 2000s – Madrid, London,
Casablanca, Bali, Jakarta, Karachi, Istanbul, Sinai, Amman and many
others – were undertaken by groups loosely connected
with al-Qaida yet often willing to act under its banner. By 2006,
however, what remained of 'al-Qaida central' had limited power, and over
the following six years was superseded by ISIS.

The ISIS strategy

ISIS's new version kept the long-term aim of creating
a worldwide caliphate. But from 2011, circumstances in Syria (after the
start of the Arab awakening) and Iraq (after the American withdrawal)
allowed for the rapid creation of an actual proto-caliphate. ISIS was
therefore much more focused on territory, and won considerable success
in the effort. This eventually resulted in a US-led coalition mounting a
strong reaction in the shape of the air-war that started in August
2014: Operation Inherent Resolve.
The intensity of the war has been scarcely reported. It has involved 57,000 sorties and 8,300 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria that as of 13 November 2015, hit 16,075 separate targets.
The overwhelming majority of the sorties were flown by US air force
(USAF) and US navy planes. The Pentagon estimates that 20,000 ISIS
supporters have been killed. Furthermore, the withdrawal of Bahrain,
Jordan, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates from airstrikes in Syria
means that this is now essentially a western war (see "Syria, another 'all-American' war?", 12 November 2015).
Such a concentrated
war would create the expectation of ISIS being on its knees. Yet the
Pentagon also estimates that the number of active ISIS paramilitaries is
unchanged from 2014 at 20,000-30,000, while US intelligence agencies
say that 30,000 people from 100 countries have joined ISIS (compared to
15,000 people from 80 countries by mid-2014). The air-war, in short, is
not defeating ISIS (see "The west vs ISIS: a new stage", 21 November 2015).
Moreover,
a significant change in ISIS tactics has occurred. It now combines
holding territory with operating overseas in a manner reminiscent of
al-Qaida’s approach of a decade ago. In the past year ISIS has sought to
make stronger connections with Islamist paramilitaries in several
countries – including Libya, southern Russia, Yemen and Afghanistan –
and bring them under its own banner. It is also promoting direct attacks
elsewhere: among them two attacks in Tunisia (Tunis's Bardo museum and Sousse's beach resort), the destruction of a Russian tourist jet over Sinai, and bombings in Beirut and Paris.
There
are almost certain to be more, not least as ISIS is reported to have
established an organised wing of the movement with this specific aim
(see Eric Schmitt, “Paris Attacks and Other Assaults Seen as Evidence of a Shift by ISIS”, New York Times, 23 November 2015). The plan has three purposes:
* to demonstrate power and capability, including to supplant what remains of the support for al-Qaida
* to incite as much Islamophobia and community conflict as possible, especially in France and Britain
* to provoke an even more intense war from the west, ideally involving western ground-troops.
All this is relevant to the decision by Britain's prime minister David Cameron to seek approval
for the Royal Air Force (RAF) to join in the bombing of Syria. It is
highly likely that this will be supported by the House of Commons within
the next week, unless individual members can rise above the
understandable desire that 'something must be done'. But it is
significant that behind the rhetoric about destroying and defeating
ISIS, the government's intention in terms of the direct assault is
actually far more modest.
When parliament's foreign-affairs committee asked Cameron what the overall objective of the military campaign was and whether it was intended to be 'war-winning', he replied:
“The objective of our counter-ISIL campaign is to degrade ISIL’s
capabilities so that it no longer presents a significant terrorist
threat to the UK or an existential threat to Syria, Iraq or other
states.” This falls far short of a military victory and no timetable is
given even for this limited aim.

Back to the future

The
decision to expand the war against ISIS is worth putting in historical
perspective. By the end of 2001, three months after 9/11, the US
coalition appeared to have destroyed the Taliban and massively damaged
al-Qaida. This enabled George W Bush to declare success in his
state-of-the-union address
in January 2002. Yet al-Qaida went on to facilitate attacks worldwide,
and the war against a resurgent Taliban continues to this day.
By
May 2003, President Bush could declare “mission accomplished” against
Saddam Hussein’s regime after just six weeks, but an immensely costly
eight-year war ensued. In 2011, President Obama felt Iraq sufficiently
secure to withdraw all US combat-troops, but within two years ISIS was
rampant. That same year, France and Britain celebrated the end of the
Gaddafi regime in Libya only for the country to disintegrate into a
violent, failing state and weapons to proliferate across the Sahel.
What
is frankly amazing is that the same mistakes are being made, and that
western leaders are falling into the same traps. There is no recognition
at all that ISIS is intent on provoking an expanded war, that this is
what it is going to get, and that its leadership will be well satisfied
with its achievements.

Friday, 20 November 2015

Sisters and Brothers,
For the first time since World War II, at the close of a long night of
terrorist attacks on November 13th, France found itself under mandatory curfew.
Since the announcement that France would treat this as an ‘act of war,’ over 150
counterterrorism raids have taken place. A manhunt is raging, not to mention the
bombing of the capital of ISiS in Syria. The events that have transpired in
France are a stark reminder of the violent and challenging world we live in. We
mourn the loss of life our brothers and sisters from acts of terrorism and
condemn the violence that caused that loss of life.

We should be clear about where this problem of rapidly metastasizing
terrorism comes from. Our problem has consistently been us – nations with power
and influence Our problem has consistently been us – nations with power and
influence. Instead of using diplomatic means to solve crises, we have turned to
military strategies that have lead us farther and farther down the wrong path.
Even our president has admitted that using the military to solve this problem
seems futile. So killing and maiming many innocent civilians in pursuit of
terrorists will likely make things worse, not better. Sadly, the very people
we’ll be bombing in Syria and elsewhere hold the key to the solution. It will
take the work of the citizens of this region to make their situations better.
Anything else will lead to more displacement.

We should also remember that what happened in Paris on that Friday night
happens with regularity in a Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan. These countries
experience similar tragedies yet don’t receive the goodwill bestowed upon the
French. Most days they are ignored. While it doesn’t diminish the horror and
sadness that we should all feel at what Parisians have experienced, it certainly
makes you wonder where we draw the line when it comes to human suffering. Are
Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis, Afghans or Lebanese somehow less deserving? We should
view a loss of life anywhere just as deserving of international solidarity and
support. Anything less is hypocrisy.

In times like these, it is easy to get caught up in rhetoric and nationalism,
forgetting that war has been an expensive venture that leads to no substantive
gains. To quote Phyllis Bennis “Terrorism survives wars; people don’t.” That’s
why it is important to tell the truth about terrorism and the War on Terror. The
economic wellbeing of the country is threatened by the overhang of debt created
by the reckless funding of war and the distorted federal budget priorities that
fund U.S. militarized foreign policy, instead of devoting those resources to
urgent domestic human needs.

Finally, even in these dark moments we must remember to reject these racist
and reactionary attacks on refugees and immigrants. The terror of war has forced
hundreds of thousands to flee their homes and countries. The Islamophobic
attempt to characterize these victims of violence as potential terrorists is
intended to stoke fear and feeds the broader racist xenophobic attack on
immigrants and people of color. The vast majority of those who have been victims
of terrorism are themselves Muslims. The perpetrators of these attacks are no
more representative of Islam than members of the Ku Klux Klan are representative
of Christianity. The U.S. has a moral duty to provide aid and sanctuary to
refugees fleeing wars that are largely fought with arms that our country has
poured into the Middle East.

As we reflect on the terrible continuing effects of the Iraq war, we in U.S.
Labor Against the War commit ourselves to continuing and deepening our
partnerships within the labor movement and with peace, veterans, and community
organizations. We will continue to work with our partners in the Iraqi labor
movement and Iraqi civil society. We will not turn away from our longstanding
commitments to peace and justice across the globe, and for our veterans and the
American people.

We are determined to end our country’s militarized foreign
policy, no matter where our government seeks to apply it, and to promote true
security for our people through universal education, health care, and modern
infrastructure.
In Solidarity,
US Labor Against the War

Jeremy Corbyn is targetted again today by the Dail Mail, and other right wing newspapers, for insufficiently recognising the sacrifice of millions who died in numerous British wars over the past century. He did not bow low enough. He suggested that wars are usually futile. That Wilfred Owen's poem Futility is appropriate for reading on Remembrance Sunday. That wars and capitalism are interlinked. That the First World War was a bloodbath that was propelled by naked land grabs and not a defence of freedom against aggression or of democracy against autocracy.

Among other things, the Daily Mail objects to this statement by Corbyn:

'I
have no objection to people wearing poppies in memory of those who died
in wars, but in doing so we should have enough humility to realise that
war kills and, as the first world war showed, is usually futile.

'There
are alternatives but they require a different way of administering the
world and standing up to commercial pressures, arms and mineral
companies who seek to move in behind Western intervention.

'Perhaps
this is where we should be focusing and not on the jingoism and bunting
that was hung out in 1914 for the young men who were seen off on train
stations in London before breathing their last on the western front.'

In the Sunday Times, a Tory MP accuses Corbyn of politicising Remembrance Sunday.

In those attacks is revealed what the Right considers that British wars have been fought for and Britain stands for in the world. It revelas the Establishment consensus - the politics - behind remembering the dead, remembering those who lost their lives. Behind all the talk of sacrifice is a hard-nosed pro-war politics that remains on the current political agenda. It reveals one stark fact that has hardly changed despite so-called decolonisation - that the British Establishment's imperial world view remains fundamental to their self concepts and concept of the 'national' interest.

Jeremy Corbyn's election to Labour leader threatens that imperial, pro-war consensus that led to the most recent wars of choice that Britain has waged, and is waging - Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and its current military role in Iraq and Syria.

Corbyn does not stand alone - he stands for an influential and widespread viewpoint that is opposed to militarism, imperialism and war.

Monday, 2 November 2015

Blair’s apology fails to deal with
core matter: that he and Bush tailored intelligence to wage a war of aggression
for regime change in Iraq and committed crimes against peace

Tony Blair’s recent ‘apology’ for ‘errors’ in making war on
Iraq in 2003 has been declared a non-apology by most commentators and media,
including those who supported the war drive and peddled with enthusiasm the
myth of Iraqi WMD (weapons of mass destruction).This is because Blair has only re-stated what
he’s been saying for over a decade – that the war on Iraq resulted from a
failure of the intelligence services to deliver accurate information on WMD.
Unfortunately, hardly anyone appears to have made the more significant point –
that both President Bush and Tony Blair knew full well Iraq had no WMD arsenal
and tailored evidence to support a predetermined strategy of regime change, to
knock out the Saddam Hussein regime that threatened broader western interests
in the middle east. The threat was mainly political – Saddam refused to kowtow
to the US, West or their Arab allies.

Blair’s apology is rightly seen as a political
agenda-setting move to deal with a likely damning verdict from the long-awaited
(Sir John) Chilcott Report on the Iraq war, which Blair has by all accounts
already seen. In the longer term, it is rumoured that Blair harbours a desire
to return to the House of Commons. Both moves suggest a level of delusion rare
even among the most ambitious leaders in world history.

It is only a few days ago that damning correspondence
between then US secretary of state Colin Powell and the White House revealed
that Blair had committed Britain to a US war on Iraq at least a year before
March 2003. Previously leaked documents, such as the infamous Downing Street
memo, had already shown that British intelligence services knew and reported
directly to 10 Downing Street and Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a face-to-face
meeting, that there was little evidence of Iraq possessing WMD.

The Downing Street Memo (July 2002) states: “C [Sir Richard Dearlove, head
of MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service] reported on his recent talks in
Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now
seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified
by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were
being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and
no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was
little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.”

Bush had decided on military action to remove
Saddam, the US administration had also determined a way to justify that
action—the ‘conjunction’ of terrorism and WMD. And the intelligence to
back up the terrorism-WMD link was being arranged (“fixed around”) to support
the already-determined policy of invasion. Not only did the National
Security Council – headed by Condoleeza Rice - have “no patience” with going to
the UN, there was noor “little discussion”
in Washington about what would happen after Baghdad fell.

That meeting also made clear that any war on Iraq for regime
change would be illegal under international law. It was also revealed that only
a war of self-defence could be classified as lawful, and that would be limited
to restoring the previous status quo, not regime change. The only other reasons
for war would be humanitarian intervention or a United Nations resolution.

At that meeting, Blair developed the argument linking WMD to
regime change – that it was the regime that produced and threatened peace
through WMD. But the intelligence was clear – no IraqiWMD existed – the UN weapons inspectors, led
by Hans Blix, had demonstrated that through painstaking searches. Yet, Blair
was informed at that meeting that as the US war plan required the use of
British military and air bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia, and because Britain
was a signatory of the International Criminal Court, its actions would be
illegal insofar as the war was waged for regime change.

According to Colin Powell’s letter to Bush, Blair had agreed
to present the “strategic, tactical and public affairs line” both to President
Bush and the general public to aid the war drive. Both believed that success in
Iraq would lead to even greater success in the Gulf region.

It was due to the weak case made by intelligence services
that the Blair government produced what has become known as “the dodgy dossier”
– the document that declared Saddam Hussein’s intention to use WMD against the
west and the capability of delivering such attacks in a space of just 45
minutes.

Tony Blair is relying on short memories by eliding the real
issue – the tailoring of intelligence in Britain and the US – in order to
illegally overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime which led to many hundreds of
thousands of deaths, a refugee crisis, and the rise of the Islamic State, the
Khmer Rouge of our age.

The issue is not about a Blair apology but about crimes
against peace and in the prosecution of a war of aggression.